Transformational Leadership and Innovation for Competitive Advantage in Large Firms and SMEs

The aim of this study is to empirically investigate how transformational leadership (TL) practices encourage innovation for competitive advantage within the specific context of Saudi large firms and SMEs. Despite a profusion of studies noting that innovation strongly contributes to a firm’s performance, there is a dearth of studies about how TL practically encourages organizational innovativeness. Moreover, because many leadership studies are limited in their location to Western nations, further research in a range of different cultural contexts is warranted. This study will address these issues and suggest a conceptual framework that empirically tests the path-dependent influences of: TL, structural capital, relational capital, tacit knowledge sharing and training, on innovation outcomes. This study will employ a mixed methods approach to examine the hypothesized relationships between factors. The findings of this research may emphasize the importance of utilising TL style as a process, rather than through the study of leadership alone, in facilitating innovation.

The Power of Many

Collective efforts of masses provide access to funding and ideas. While such endeavors in a business-to-customer context are well-described, they are less well understood in other contexts such as business-to-business. A literature review that exacts knowledge and inspiration from B2C crowdsourcing and other forms of collective innovation is used. This review generates new knowledge to close this gap and develops a 6-stage innovation framework for Collective Engagement, Intelligence & Innovation (CEI^2) that begins with task specification and concludes with management of inputs generated from the CEI^2 efforts. The framework and the accompanying list of questions may be used by theorists to explore different contexts, and for managers to structure B2B or P2P crowdsourcing more effectively. Contributions of this study include exploration of the theoretical areas of open-source innovation that extend beyond a B2C model, and new ways of effectively structuring CEI^2. Further research may explore the CEI^2 framework through a case study or test it through quantitative study.

Transducers as Gates to the Universe

The ‘main structure and performances’ of any physical system may be (nearly) maintained for a given time interval only if this system is kept inside a kind of ‘shell’ that protects it and only, if the necessary (desired) exchange of energy-mass with its environment is realized through some transducers. The subsystem constituted by the shell and transducers constitutes a kind of ‘barrier’ between this physical system and its environment. Then, humans can exchange energy, mass, and then information with their environment only though their available transducers. The paper presents the chapters: about Plank energy, about inertia in rotation, translation, about waves and space dimensions, all based on classical physics and mathematics. These chapters present in a different manner some very well-known physical phenomena. Associated with a new and convenient technology, all these models may be considered as innovation strategy importance. Applications may be found in interplanetary telecommunications and treks but also for every day earth vehicles and life.

Transducers as Gates to the Universe

The ‘main structure and performances’ of any physical system may be (nearly) maintained for a given time interval only if this system is kept inside a kind of ‘shell’ that protects it and only, if the necessary (desired) exchange of energy-mass with its environment is realized through some transducers. The subsystem constituted by the shell and transducers constitutes a kind of ‘barrier’ between this physical system and its environment. Then, humans can exchange energy, mass, and then information with their environment only though their available transducers. The paper presents the chapters: about Plank energy, about inertia in rotation, translation, about waves and space dimensions, all based on classical physics and mathematics. These chapters present in a different manner some very well-known physical phenomena. Associated with a new and convenient technology, all these models may be considered as innovation strategy importance. Applications may be found in interplanetary telecommunications and treks but also for every day earth vehicles and life.

Designing and Adapting Services to Create Value Outside a Hospital Using Blockchain Architecture

As healthcare systems develop innovative services to create value for patients outside the hospital or clinical care facility, they face a major challenge. They need a communication architecture to support the sharing of information among the healthcare providers, patients, and external partners to fulfill the value created. The current electronic medical record systems of hospitals do not extend to many of these external partners unless they are part of the provider network. This paper proposes the use of blockchain architecture to address this challenge. By modeling service innovations used to create value as a set of service exchanges among providers, patients, and partners, the providers decide when blockchain architecture may complement their own extended EMR system in fulfilling the value they create to address patient needs. The authors use gamification to improve patient adherence to treatment plans designed to fulfill the value created and adapt the value created to reflect the changing patient ecosystem. The paper concludes with discussion and directions for future research.

Generating Ideas for New Product Development

Continual innovation is imperative to sustain competition. Companies require generating innovative product ideas and implementing them. Companies require understanding customer requirements and preferences and doing continual innovation to develop offerings for meeting and exceeding customer expectations. New product ideas may come from varied sources and by applying diverse creativity techniques. Companies generate ideas from both internal and external sources. Internal sources include research and development and employees. External sources include customers, competitors, and various other stakeholders. Companies may adopt creativity techniques like crowdsourcing, brainstorming, role-playing, forming forced relationships, morphological analysis, reversing of assumptions about product usage, mind mapping of individuals, and lateral marketing. Companies require creating and encouraging a culture of innovation to generate ideas, implement them, exceed customer expectations, succeed in the completion, and have long-term growth.

The Mind of Sustainability

The authors introduce the science of Mind Genomics to explore what specific messages drive a person to say they will be interested in sustainability and motivated to do something. The messages are the nature of the message and the venue where the message is received. The experiment mixed messages/elements into small vignettes, presented the vignettes to respondents, and obtained ratings. These ratings were then deconstructed into the contribution of the individual elements to motivate respondents, as well as the degree to which the individual elements engage respondents. The results reveal specific messages that drive interest and motivation, respectively, and uncover two mind-sets, those swayed by feelings versus those swayed by facts. They introduce the personal viewpoint identifier (PVI) to identify these mind-sets and what to say to them.

Practical Implications On How Established Companies Innovate With Startups

The study addresses an important literature gap concerning open innovation and startups. The purpose of this article is to deliver tools and guidelines for innovation managers to support their decision-making when aspiring to openly innovate with startups. The study proposes five spectra that show the variance across different collaboration on the following parameters for analysis: 1) investment required; 2) risk level; 3) corporate control; 4) Startup support; 5) ecosystem leverage. The article arrives at a simple weighted decision matrix to be used as a decision-guiding tool in determining the best choice of a startup-collaboration option from a corporate perspective. The research builds on a framework of references to previous literature and follows an explorative approach based on field research and design science research.

Impact of Workplace Diversity on Employee Performance

The authors explore how the milieu of workplace diversity affects the relationship between employee and performance. In particular, we theorize and empirically examine the moderating effects of four (4) categories of diversity context variables: age, gender, ethnicity, and educational background. The authors perform analyses on 175 out of 320 respondents consisting of academic and administrative staff of four selected private universities in Ghana. The results showed, for example, that workplace diversity has an overall influence on employee performance, however, educational diversity has more effect on employee performance in the universities compared to the other competing variables used in this study. Age and educational diversity had a significant impact on employee performance in the universities whilst gender and ethnicity diversity had no influence on their performance. We discuss future research directions regarding diversity, workgroup context, and performance outcomes and outline some recommendations for administrators and university leaders.

Managing and Applying Innovation in New Product Development - Strategies and Initiatives

Companies require introducing new products in the market and manage product innovation properly to remain ahead in the competition. Innovative firms should adopt a customer-centered approach towards managing innovation. They require understanding individual differences of customers in their readiness to accept innovation and roles of product characteristics in adoption of innovation among customers. Managing innovation requires collaboration and proper coordination. Top management support is imperative for new product development. Firms should adopt an approach of team-based innovation. Also, firms should handle innovation in a systematic rather than in a haphazard manner. Innovative companies should also consider opportunities during turbulent times and invest wisely to utilize those opportunities. Firms may also benefit by targeting individuals at the bottom of the pyramid with innovation. Companies require considering all these approaches towards managing innovation in new product development to perform and excel in the competition.